Reply to: How much would you spend on a test/dev server?

[doodab]

My laptop has that using Intel Rapid Store.
Its fine up until a point then it completely borks my machine and forces me into rebooting it, this usually happens after using very data and disk intensive activities especially with VMs and then trying to switch to doing something else.

Personally I wold stick to a largish SSD for all rapid access stuff and another large SSD for everything else, alternatively use a fast and large HDD for general data

Given that you can now pick up 512GB of SSD for £250, using a very small one as a cache doesn't (IMO) make sense unless you really are pushed for budget

I think the LSI adapters are in a slightly different ballpark, certainly not intended for people who are "pushed for budget" as they start at about £500.

They are aimed at situations where you want to accelerate a disk array and replacing it with SSD would be cost prohibitive i.e. if you have 12 x 3TB HDD in an array that would cost about £20k to replace with pure SSD, so a £600 RAID card and £300 SSD for use as a cache doesn't look so bad.

I'd agree that for desktop / laptop / workstation use SSD is the way to go, I've been using them for 4-5 years now and I can't imagine going back.

[stek]

That's not great power-wise then, is it
eek's i7 has 4 physical cores but 8 logical ones with HT, even if we were talking about physical 8 cores from Intel, which I am still eagerly awaiting on a consumer/prosumer platform, it should be around 250 at load.

Having said that, my build is very likely to idle much so I am more than happy to shell out a little extra for Haswell, likewise with SSDs (althouugh only a few watts here).

Any sort of hosting has no chance of being cheaper, as the also have to pay the electricity, A/C, staff etc
The whole cloud thing is really overhyped

That's fair enough but this is yester-tech that I have really, when it's idle (i.e. off - just the ILOM running) it's on 62w, I just don't know if the stuff you're hoping for will have the cooling/remote management/redundancy that this bit of iron has, be nice if it has tho!

This Mac is i7, 32gb ram with an SSD but it bogs down and the fans start under load, I just wonder how much ampage its drawing when in that state....

Apples and Oranges really......

[yasockie]

Just got the X4600M2 today, fired it up with 8 cores, 32gb RAM, 2x73gb SAS and it's sat at 533w while ESX 5.1 is installing.

That's not great power-wise then, is it
eek's i7 has 4 physical cores but 8 logical ones with HT, even if we were talking about physical 8 cores from Intel, which I am still eagerly awaiting on a consumer/prosumer platform, it should be around 250 at load.

Having said that, my build is very likely to idle much so I am more than happy to shell out a little extra for Haswell, likewise with SSDs (althouugh only a few watts here).

Any sort of hosting has no chance of being cheaper, as the also have to pay the electricity, A/C, staff etc
The whole cloud thing is really overhyped

[Contreras]

You'll easily spend that much in a month renting rack space, a dedicated server, or even on EC2 (as the OP mentioned) which only makes sense if you are serious about a plan B that needs that sort of horsepower online 24x7 with "real" outgoing bandwidth and DC levels of resilience. If you don't need it then you're pissing money up the wall.

OT slightly, but if you don't need the horsepower of a dedicated server but still want a DC-hosted Linux box with root access then perhaps look at an unmanaged VPS - Low End Box - Cheap VPS Hosting Providers Listing & Reviews

[Spacecadet]

Some modern SAS controllers let you use SSD as a sort of expanded cache / write accelerator. The LSI ones seem to be particularly good.

My laptop has that using Intel Rapid Store.
Its fine up until a point then it completely borks my machine and forces me into rebooting it, this usually happens after using very data and disk intensive activities especially with VMs and then trying to switch to doing something else.

Personally I wold stick to a largish SSD for all rapid access stuff and another large SSD for everything else, alternatively use a fast and large HDD for general data

Given that you can now pick up 512GB of SSD for £250, using a very small one as a cache doesn't (IMO) make sense unless you really are pushed for budget

[doodab]

For multi-VMs I'd look at a hybrid SSD / spinning disk solution.

A common VM pattern of usage is that the density of hits on a relatively small % of your storage is high, but there is still need to access more bulky data. Also newish hybrids "learn" access patterns and are particularly good at OS booting, especially Windows, so starting VMs ought to be quicker.

Pure SSDs are of course faster, but cost per Gb is way higher.

Some modern SAS controllers let you use SSD as a sort of expanded cache / write accelerator. The LSI ones seem to be particularly good.

[Dominic Connor]

Hybrid drives

For multi-VMs I'd look at a hybrid SSD / spinning disk solution.

A common VM pattern of usage is that the density of hits on a relatively small % of your storage is high, but there is still need to access more bulky data. Also newish hybrids "learn" access patterns and are particularly good at OS booting, especially Windows, so starting VMs ought to be quicker.

Pure SSDs are of course faster, but cost per Gb is way higher.

[stek]

Yes but that only has 1 CPU, similar to my self builds. I'm talking about dual socket boxes with 8 or 12 cores and 2-3x the memory.

Just got the X4600M2 today, fired it up with 8 cores, 32gb RAM, 2x73gb SAS and it's sat at 533w while ESX 5.1 is installing.

[doodab]

Still a bit on the high side. My i7 esxi server (and 16tb (un)raid server) pulls 140 watts on average. The cost is roughly £160 a year.

Yes but that only has 1 CPU, similar to my self builds. I'm talking about dual socket boxes with 8 or 12 cores and 2-3x the memory.

[eek]

I'd agree you need to take the running costs into consideration when pricing this stuff up.

A vaguely modern 2 socket x86 server will pull maybe 400W going flat out and a lot less on idle, so your electricity bill is more like £350 a year (based on 14p a unit) than £1000.

You'll easily spend that much in a month renting rack space, a dedicated server, or even on EC2 (as the OP mentioned) which only makes sense if you are serious about a plan B that needs that sort of horsepower online 24x7 with "real" outgoing bandwidth and DC levels of resilience. If you don't need it then you're pissing money up the wall.

Still a bit on the high side. My i7 esxi server (and 16tb (un)raid server) pulls 140 watts on average. The cost is roughly £160 a year.

[doodab]

So £1K for the server and another £1K per year on leccy. And then the hosting option doesn't seem too bad....

I'd agree you need to take the running costs into consideration when pricing this stuff up.

A vaguely modern 2 socket x86 server will pull maybe 400W going flat out and a lot less on idle, so your electricity bill is more like £350 a year (based on 14p a unit) than £1000.

You'll easily spend that much in a month renting rack space, a dedicated server, or even on EC2 (as the OP mentioned) which only makes sense if you are serious about a plan B that needs that sort of horsepower online 24x7 with "real" outgoing bandwidth and DC levels of resilience. If you don't need it then you're pissing money up the wall.

[DimPrawn]

Solar panels on the roof might be an idea too.

Electricity bills 'may have to rise by 25pc' to stop the lights going out - Telegraph

So £1K for the server and another £1K per year on leccy. And then the hosting option doesn't seem too bad....

[Sysman]

In which case either self build a desktop machine or look for a 2nd hand proper server. A basic QC box with 32GB is fairly cheap to build though personally I'd look at the 6 core i7 as they will also support 64GB RAM. You can also pick up a 2nd hand server such as HP DL380 G6 or 385 for a reasonable price though you will need to add the cost of your SSDs to that, and upgrading the RAM in the future will be relatively costly.

I got burned with the cost of upgrading RAM on an older machine.

When I first looked I didn't like the price, so content myself with filling all the memory slots with lower capacity RAM.

When I looked again a year later, I couldn't find any of the larger capacity RAM available, so I was stuck.

[bobspud]

Interesting, and nicely redundant w 4 PSUs, but a bit loud isn't?
Also 1700W will probably help with heating the house in the winter???

I went down this route with a bunch of E4500's many years ago... cheap servers rapidly become expensive space heaters

Mine went straight to the dump as soon as I saw the leccy bill...

Have you thought about running an AWS image? just switch it on when you want it and leave the data on EBS volumes and use S3 for backups

[Boo]

less

Fewer.

Boo